On Saturday, 24 November 2018 17:49:47 UTC, Peter Parry wrote:
On Fri, 23 Nov 2018 08:07:18 +0000 (GMT), "Dave Liquorice"
wrote:
On Thu, 22 Nov 2018 20:50:03 +0000, Max Demian wrote:


However the most disturbing one is a flat that a tenant moved into
4
weeks ago. The mains had been disconnected from the smoke, taped
up and
shoved into the ceiling as well as the battery having been
removed.
Almost certainly like that when she moved in 4 weeks ago.

Implying that the Land Lord didn't check the detector as part of any
"pre delivery inspection".

If they are linked burning toast in one flat will set them all off.

Which depending on the buildings construction (and modifications)
might be a good thing... However such a system has to be fairly
immune to false alarms from burning toast,


An alarm from burning toast is not a false alarm but the detector
doing its job and alerting the occupants that it has detected the
products of combustion (not necessarily smoke).

it's a false alarm because there is no fire, no reason for the occupants to evacuate.

or the smokes will get
disabled. If the kitchen opens into the hallway the chances are it
won't be immune to false alarms. A hallway detector needs to be a
smoke based one not temperature.

Therein lies problem, Mrs Smith is a bit forgetfully and often singes
the bacon or overcooks the toast. Mr Jones the student doesn't
understand that letting the baked beans sit on the hob for 60 mins
will write off another saucepan and set off the alarms. Mr Williams
who works nights is seriously ****ed off by being constantly woken by
these events so whacks the detector until it stops making a noise. Mr
Abdul smokes a Hookah which regularly sets off the alarm because some
well meaning idiot put a detector in the lounge.etc. No one has yet
discovered a reliable "Hey this really is a fire you need to do
something!" alarm.

Yes they have. They're called heat alarms. The reason we also use ionisation & optical detectors is because they detect real fires much earlier in the process, giving much improved odds of survival. The downside is false alarms.

Perhaps the way forward might be a building-wide heat alarm system with local ionisation alarms that only warn locally. Maybe.

The other somewhat obvious thing is to position the alarms correctly, something many simply don't do. Advice to do that even got deleted from the wiki. Even an ionisation alarm doesn't false alarm in a kitchen if positioned well.


NT